WASHINGTON — The lure of roads, bridges, buses and trains isn’t
enough anymore to drive an expensive transportation bill through
Congress. So to round up votes, congressional leaders are pitching the
bills as the hottest thing around these days: job generators.
But do they really create more jobs? Not really, is the answer
from many economists. The bills would simply shift investment that was
creating jobs elsewhere in the economy to transportation industries.
That means different jobs, but not necessarily additional ones.

As a 21st-Century commuter, you’ve already downloaded all the available transit apps to your handset or personal computing device. You’ve got apps that tell you what time your bus is going to be there, and, well, another app that tells you when your bus is going to be there. What you’re really anxiously awaiting is – you guessed it – the update to the app that tells you when your bus is going to be there, with fancy new graphics and a button that lets you tweet when your bus is going to be there.